Make
no mistake, the Lotus Turbo Esprit was not just a slightly modified
Esprit, nor just an easy and conventional way of gaining incremental
sales for Lotus. In the Hethel scheme of things it was very important
and technically very significant, if only for the fact that it was chosen
to spearhead a new assault on the United States market in 1983. It is
tempting to suggest that if only Lotus had been able to give the car
a different body style, they would certainly have been justified in
giving it an entirely different name as well. Under the skin, which
was extensively retouched by Giugiaro, there was a new chassis-frame,
new rear suspension, new aerodynamic features and a turbocharged version
of the 2.2-litre 16-valve engine, which produced no less than 210bhp.
For this amazing car, Lotus claimed a top speed of 152mph —and it meant
that they had produced their first true Supercar. By any engineering
standards, the Turbo Esprit was, and is, a phenomenal motor car. However,
like the original Esprit, it was first shown to the public a long time
before deliveries could possibly begin. The occasion of the car’s launch
was an extravagant party at the Albert Hall, in London, hosted by Team
Lotus’ Grand Prix sponsors at that time, Essex Petroleum, in which one
of the three prototypes was displayed in the dramatic Essex blue, silver
and red livery. Although the Turbo Esprit was the first Lotus actually
to be exhibited with a 2.2-litre engine, the normally-aspirated version
of this unit had already gone into production for the S2.2 models. Even
so, because of the rush to show a Turbo Esprit at the Albert Hall, the
planned release of non-turbocharged engines was overshadowed for several
months.

An
early rendering of the Lotus Turbo Esprit, with the S2 speedline alloy
wheels

Lotus’
own press material stresses the scope and nature of the new car’s development:
‘... this new addition to our model range is not an Esprit with a bolt-on
Turbo pack, but a fully developed and redesigned motor car in its own
right.’ So much of the car was new, indeed, that it would probably be
easier to list what was not changed, modified or improved. For a start,
there was a new design of backbone frame, prepared not only because
Lotus wanted to provide an altogether more integrated structure than
before, and to accommodate a new rear suspension, but also because they
wanted to leave enough space for the still-secret V8 unit to be fitted
one day. Lotus made no secret of the existence of a large-capacity V8
engine in their development programme, which explain6 why the engine
bay of the new frame was wider and the general layout so much more sturdy.

At
the front of the car, the independent suspension — now with more Lotus-sourced
parts than ever — and rack-and-pinion steering of existing Esprits was
retained, but at the rear there was a new layout. Earlier cars had used
the simplest possible linkage, in which the fixed-length driveshafts
doubled as upper transverse links. The disadvantage of this was that
comenng stresses were fed into the final drive housing, found their
way to the rest of the engine/transmission assembly and did little to
minimize harshness and vibration in the structure. For the new car,
there was a new linkage, with a wide-based lower wishbone and an upper
transverse link, which allowed the driveshaft to have sliding joints
and to carry out only one function; coil spring/damper units, of course,
were also retained. Development of the new car began before the end
of 1977, and if so much effort had not needed to be diverted into the
DeLorean project, it would certainly have been announced months earlier
than was the case. Even so, the M72, as the Turbo Esprit was known —
M7 1 was the project including the V8 engine, by the way — progressed
from ‘good idea’ to production car in little over two years. Apart from
the new chassis and suspension, early decisions had to be made about
the body style and the changes to the engine.

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Compared
with the bodyshell on normal Esprits of the period, there were many
obvious changes and additions, mostly made for good aerodynamic reasons.
The main shape and structure was unchanged, but differences were obvious
from all angles. At the front, there was a larger wrap-round bumper
allied to a deep new spoiler. There were matching skirts along the sides,
under the doors, complete with NACA-type ducts moulded in to direct
cooling air towards the engine compartment. At the rear there was a
sizeable and completely functional spoiler above the tail-lamps and
number-plate, a large bumper matching the front component and extra
skirting under the tail. Above the engine bay, instead of glass there
was Venetian-blind-style black louvring. In addition, not only to make
the styling even more distinctive, but to optimize the roadholding,
there were 1 5in diameter alloy road wheels of a new style, with 7in
front and 8in rear rims and Goodyear NCT tyres. Most Turbos have been
sold on BB’s wheels, but a few early cars were supplied with three-piece
Compomotive rims instead. To produce the new Type 910 engine Lotus redesigned
the Type 907 from end to end, and the final product differs in almost
every detail from normally-aspirated Type 911 (Talbot Sunbeam-Lotus)
and Type 912 (S2.2 Lotus) units. The finalized engine had its Garrett
AiResearch turbocharger mounted above the clutch bellhousing, behind
the cylinder block, and boosted inlet air to the Dellorto carburettors
to a peak of 8psi above atmospheric pressure. To compensate for this,
and to optimize all settings, the nominal compression was reduced to
7.5:1 (from 9.4:1) and there was a different camshaft profile. A feature
not always noticed by the pundits was the dry-sump lubrication system.

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on image to enlarge

The
result of a great deal of development work was not only a very powerful
engine — peak power was 210bhp (DIN) at 6,250rpm and peak torque 2001b.ft
at 4,500rpm — but one which was extremely flexible, having mostly ‘non-turbo’
habits. Its behaviour was so unexpectedly good, for instance, that Motor
Sport headlined its test, ‘The perfect driving machine?’, while Autocar
called the very same car a ‘paragon of the turbocharged’. To deal with
all this power, the only important changes were to the clutch — whose
diameter was increased by an inch — and the brakes, which were larger
— but not ventilated — at front and rear. Inside the car, it was still
the same basic layout as before, with no more space for stowing oddments,
cases or especially children(!) though there was a new and plushy type
of trim and padding, while the Essex cars were given air conditioning
as standard and a complex Panasonic radio cassette player mounted in
the centre of the roof panel; unfortunately this was FM (VHF wavelength)
only, so was disliked by most customers and was dropped when the Essex
Commemorative run was complete. Although the Essex Turbo Esprit, price
£20,950, had been announced in February 1980, deliveries did not begin
until August that year, immediately after the summer holiday shut-down.
However, although development work had been completed to ‘Federalize’
the sensational engine, the Turbo Esprit, as already explained, was
not sent to the United States at this stage. In its first calendar year,
1980, therefore, a total of 57 Turbos were built, of which 44 stayed
in the UK

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Apart
from the price of the Turbo — which in January 1981 had not changed
from the launch figure — another feature which seemed to disturb some
potential customers was the flamboyant Essex colour scheme. Very wisely,
therefore, Lotus decided to offer a more conventional machine once the
intended 100 Essex cars had been built. From April 1981 a Turbo Esprit
in conventional colours, but still with all the appropriate body panels
and decals, was made available for £16,917, though part of this huge
price reduction was due to the fact that air conditioning was now an
optional extra. Demand perked up almost at once, and in spite of the
generally reduced level of Lotus sales in 1981 and 1982, Turbo production
rose to 116 in 1981 and 205 in 1982. In 1982, the Turbo was the fastest-selling
Lotus model, backed up by the normally-aspirated Esprit S3, of which
160 cars were built. The glamorous publicity occasioned by the use of
Turbo Esprits in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only did no harm
at all! Lotus had had several traumatic experiences in trying to sell
and support cars in the United States, but Mike Kimberley thought that
a new deal would offer the best of all possible worlds. Before the end
of 1982, a new company, Lotus Performance Cars, was set up on the East
Coast, headed by John A Spiech, previously General Manager of Ferrari,
North America - a 1,000 cars per year operation —and it was suggested
that 350 cars would be sold in 1983, with 700 projected for 1986.

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Lotus
Esprit S3

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Lotus
Turbo Esprit

As Mike Kimberley
told me: ‘We have a special car for this market, which is really a brand
new model, with a new set of body moulds, a lot more space, foot boxes
and headroom, and so on. We’re going in for the first time ever with
a clean market. There hasn’t been mid-engined Lotus for sale over there
since 1981, and the Turbo was never launched over there, so it’s all
new. Even though the 1983 Federal Turbo Esprit kept its original project
number of M72, it was new or modified in many respects, and factory
personnel were very excited about its prospects, especially as the peak
power output had needed only minor trimming. Lotus viewed the realignment
of £/$ exchange rates as an unqualified bonus for them as exporters.
Early in 1983 they were expecting to price their Turbo Esprit at $48,000,
compared with the $60,000 asked for the equivalent two-seater Ferrari
308. ‘And,’ as Kimberley quoted with glee, ‘our car will do 0—60mph
in 6.5sec in full detoxed trim, whereas that Ferrari takes 8.3sec.’
After March 1983, all Turbo Esprits were built with conventional wet-sump
engine lubrication. The dry-sumping introduced in 1980 was always agreed
to be a real safety-conscious ‘belt and braces’ job, and prolonged testing
convinced the engineers that it was not really needed.

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The success of this
car, and the almost universal praise for its engineering, behaviour
and detail fittings, all go to prove that at this price a customer is
more interested in ‘the right specification than in mundane practicality.
If he is not in the Turbo Esprit price class, he simply would not appreciate
that the extrovert good looks also have a functional effect on the car’s
aerodynamics, but he would appreciate the intercooling effect of the
finned manifolding from turbocharger to carburettor plenum chamber,
the remarkable grip and handling and the excellent lie-down driving
position. And if he were a Turbo Esprit enthusiast, he would make sure
that he never went kerb-hopping to cause punctures anyway. To avoid
confusion in future years, the existence of the Bell & Colvill Esprit
Turbo must be mentioned at this stage. Bell & Colvill, based at West
Horsley, in Surrey, are Lotus dealers, and in 1978 they announced their
own privately-financed turbocharged conversion on the basis of the Esprit
S2. This car, of course, was the 2-litre model, and the turbocharging
layout was entirely different, having been developed by Stuart Mathieson
on his own account. In this conversion, priced at £2,000, there was
a single and very large SU carburettor upstream of the Garrett AiResearch
turbocharger, which fed the fuel-air mixture at a maximum boost of 8psi
to the engine, whose nominal compression ratio had been reduced to 7.5:1
by the use of new pistons. Peak power was quoted at 210bhp at 6,000rpm,
while peak torque was 2021b.ft.

Although it was
neither as flexible, nor as refined as the factory Turbo which was to
follow, the Bell & Colvill car was undoubtedly very fast, with a claimed
top speed of more than 150mph, 0—60mph in 6.2sec and 0—100mph in 17.2sec.
The only way that one could identify this car externally was because
B & C had added ‘turbo’ decals to the front and sides of the car, near
the factory’s own ‘Esprit’ decals. Esprit Turbo in the mid-Eighties
From 1983 to 1986 the Esprit Turbo was virtually buried under the tide
of controversy which surrounded Lotus, their finances and their many
commercial problems. Somehow, though, customers rose above all this
and ordered the car in increased quantities. The Esprit Turbo was Lotus’
best seller in each of those years — and in much-modified early-Nineties
form it was the only car which kept Lotus afloat. The corporate upheavals
have already been summarized in Chapter 3. In the autumn of 1983 the
Turbo was modified by being given a rather more spacious boot compartment,
but there was also the introduction of an intriguing option, a removable
glass panel in the roof. It made a good car even more versatile.

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In 1983, 343 cars
were built and no fewer than 418 would follow in 1984. In all this success,
the building of Lotus’ 30,000th car, in May 1984, passed almost unnoticed.
Except that the new eight-year anti-corrosion warranty was applied to
the Turbo’s chassis from late 1984, there were to be no more significant
changes until March 1986. That was the year in which not one, but two
powerful new derivatives were launched: one for sale to the USA and
other ‘strict-emission’ markets; the other for sale to the rest of the
world.

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In March 1986, at
the Geneva motor show, the Turbo HCPI (HC = High Compression, with Petrol
Injection) was unveiled. The compression ratio had been increased to
8.0:1, maximum boost pressure was up, and not only was this the first
Lotus to use injection — the familiar Bosch K-Jetronic layout — but
it also had a catalytic converter in the exhaust system. The packaging
engineers had done their best to make the cockpit more roomy, for the
seats had been widened and lowered, while the footwell area had been
enlarged. Not only was the engine more powerful and more torquey than
before, but the chassis had been improved with wider-section tyres (195/60s
at the front, 235/60s at the rear), while there was a new front spoiler
and a larger radiator intake. To drill home the message this car also
had HCPI decals. The ‘Rest of the World’ derivative of this car, titled
Esprit Turbo HC, was put on sale in October 1986. It shared the same
high-compression head of the HCPI, but retained its Dellorto carburettors
and was not fitted with a catalyst. Like changes made to the normally-aspirated
Esprit at the same time, the latest HC also had an uprated cooling system
and adjustable-rake seats. It was a more expensive car than before -
£24,980 in the UK, which was an increase of £l,540 on the original type.
Compared with the earlier Turbo there had been a 10 per cent torque
increase, which made an immediate and obvious difference to the performance.
When Autocar tested the car in 1987, it was summarized as: ‘In many
areas ... a very practical supercar ... a remarkably satisfying device
with which to cover long distances quickly. But with many less expensive
sportscars now offering similar performance, the Lotus begins to look
a little less attractive than it did three years ago. The same cannot
be said for its styling, however, which remains truly exotic.’ By that
time, however, the original-shape Esprit was only a few months away
from the end of its long career, though Lotus managed to keep this secret
well hidden until the very last month. In the autumn of 1987 the old
car was discontinued and a new-style, more rounded, X180 model took
over.

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New Lotus Turbo
Esprit's leaving the Hethel Factory on there way to Lotus Dealers